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RickB- Human, Artist, Fool.

Ynys Mon, UK.

The blog is called ten percent because of what Kurt Vonnegut wrote when remembering Susan Sontag - She was asked what she had learned from the Holocaust, and she said that 10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80 percent could be moved in either direction.-

And I'm writing it because I need the therapy and I lust for world domination.

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Torturers Covering Up

11 February, 2009 — RickB

And at the end of it all they are shuffling petrified pathetic dishonourable cowards who smear black marker over the truth of their crimes.

US defence officials are preventing Barack Obama from seeing evidence that a former British resident held in Guantánamo Bay has been tortured, the prisoner’s lawyer said last night, as campaigners and the Foreign Office prepared for the man’s release in as little as a week.

Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal charity Reprieve, which represents Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, sent Obama evidence of what he called “truly mediaeval” abuse but substantial parts were blanked out so the president could not read it.

Stafford Smith tells Obama he should be aware of the “bizarre reality” of the situation. “You, as commander in chief, are being denied access to material that would help prove that crimes have been committed by US personnel. This decision is being made by the very people who you command.”

It is understood US defence officials might have censored the evidence to protect the president from criminal liability or political embarrassment.

I think in order to get action Stafford Smith is being very polite and giving Obama the benefit of a shitload of doubt, nevertheless his job is to get Mohamed released and if we have to play this game so be it.

Yet something stirs, the politicians are running scared of the shitstorm, is Binyam Mohamed about to be released? If he is killed by Gitmo the value of a witness being silenced (and they have made those calculations) is outweighed by the furore it will cause.

Jay- I honestly think his life is in the balance, the more attention the safer he is. However after what was done to him, he will never be free of the effects, that’s one of the things torture is for, a life sentence. Murdoch’s The Sun had a disgusting article which called to ignore his human rights and decried taxpayers money being used on him. Like Fox in print.

Naj- Well you were until the neocons infected your body politic I guess! With all of the detainees the problem is they testify to their own nations or host countries going along with torture, so both the US and its allies are very nervous about what will transpire, at least in public opinion. They are vacillating between silencing the victims and playing the nice saviour hoping that gets them a pass on past crimes.

There is a piece on The Public Record’s blog about Rumsfeld being involved in the torture that has being obtained by the ACLU:

“Additionally, a Dec. 20, 2005, Army Inspector General Report relating to the capture and interrogation of suspected terrorist Mohammad al-Qahtani included a sworn statement by Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt. It said Secretary Rumsfeld was “personally involved” in the interrogation of al-Qahtani and spoke “weekly” with Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander at Guantanamo, about the status of the interrogations between late 2002 and early 2003.”